Human rights in China

Against the tide of human progress

"THIS absurd judgment cannot hold back the tide of human progress", activist Xu Zhiyong told the Beijing Supreme People's Court on April 11th, as his sentence of four years in jail for "gathering a crowd to disturb public order" was upheld. Mr Xu had been found guilty at a closed-door trial in January but had appealed the verdict.

January's guilty verdict was expected. The quashed appeal is no surprise either. China's courts are controlled by the Communist Party and activists are seldom acquitted. Mr Xu is a founder of the New Citizens Movement, a grassroots collective of campaigners, legal specialists and intellectuals that advocates working within the system to advance the rule of law. Scores of people associated with the movement have been arrested, largely for staging non-violent rallies outside the education ministry in Beijing. With four others on trial in the past week, it is the culmination of an official pushback against the movement. In court, Mr Xu seemed undeterred. "The authoritarian smog is bound to disperse, and the sun-rays of freedom, justice and love will shine on China," he said, according to his lawyer. Foreign reporters were not allowed into court.

America, the European Union and human-rights organisations condemned the ruling. The American embassy said it was "deeply disappointed". Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, called the government hypocritical and counterproductive. "If Chinese authorities insist that these people's peaceful civic activism constitutes a threat to public order, it's hard to tell what doesn't," Sophie Richardson, its China director, said.

Mr Xu, a legal scholar, believes in the advancement of social change within the bounds of Chinese law. His movement seeks to encourage citizens to stand up for the rights they should have under the country's constitution. Core issues for the New Citizens have been the disclosure of officials' wealth and the improvement of education rights for children from the countryside.

These in theory chime with government objectives. Since assuming office, President Xi Jinping has spearheaded an anti-corruption campaign aimed at rooting out the "tigers and flies"—officials both high and low—who abuse office. The government has also pledged to reform the hukou household-registration system, the administrative device which has long prevented the children of migrant workers who are living in cities from receiving an education equal to their urban peers.

The problem for the New Citizens Movement is that the party considers itself to be the only font of change. The crackdown show its consistent intolerance of organised dissent. In this, Mr Xi's administration has shown arguably less patience than its predecessor. Since he became party chief in 2012, controls over the internet have tightened, journalists have faced greater strictures and free-thinking academics have been evicted from prominent posts.

Heavy-handedness has, so far, failed to disband the New Citizens entirely. On the same day Xu Zhiyong's appeal was rejected, a publisher in Hong Kong released his autobiography (Hong Kong, a former British colony, has retained more social freedoms than mainland China). "To Be a Citizen”, published by New Century Press, comes in three parts, including a section on Mr Xu's vision of a democratic China. That may seem radical. But with the rise of a burgeoning middle class, a social conscience has emerged, too.

Mr Xu's trial also coincided with the launch of a New Citizens Movement website. In an early post on the site, Xiao Shu, a pen-name used by a former journalist and an influential member, wrote that a new civic-minded society will emerge and lead China's transition to constitutionalism. "This is the prevailing tide of our time," he writes. "Any attempt to hold it back is destined to fail, like beating back water with a sword." That may prove true but progress, always fragile, is halting. Access to the new website and Xiao Shu's call-to-arms was swiftly blocked.

Interpretation and fulfillment of human rights differ from country to country and time to time. When western colonialists invaded other countries, looted their treasures, conducted slave trade or drove the aboriginals away from where they had used to live against their own wills, when racial discrimination was on the prevalence in the US and UK in the 1960s, when the allied forces poured millions of tons shells and missiles on the soils of Iraq and Afghanistan two decades ago, where human rights or how human rights are instituted in the law to which western democratic countries claim.

The US, the only superpower in the world and most democratic nation modeled by the rest of the world is no exception when it comes to human rights in the year 2013 alone. The U.S. government exercises massive and unrestrained information tapping on its own citizens. Edward Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, revealed a tapping program carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA), code-named PRISM. Under the program, the U.S. intelligence, by virtue of data provided by nine Internet companies, including the Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo, and other major telecom providers, tracked citizens' private contacts and social activities recklessly (www.washingtonpost.com, June 7, 2013).

The number of violent crimes has risen sharply. According to the Uniform Crime Reports, released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013, the U.S. registered 1,214,464 violent crimes in 2012, of which 14,827 are murders and non-negligent manslaughters, 84,376 forcible rapes, 354,522 robberies and 760,739 aggravated assaults. According to statistics revealed by the Bureau of Justice on October 24, 2013, the rate of violent victimization increased from 22.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 2011 to 26.1 in 2012. What utterance in words would the bulwark of human rights make towards the figures, let alone the Snowden case that puts the whole world under the surveillance regardless head of the states allied to the US of A?

Some of Chinese are so native in making their appeals to the west for human rights that, in my humble opinion, they would either be easily made fool by western media or be driven by their own ill-intention. The US as its allies is at a loss in handling the Crimean or the Ukrainian case in Europe since the power is ebbing, how can our Chinese human rights activists gain support from the west like they did 30 or so years ago?

In English, there is one proverb goes that accidents happen in the best regulated families, which explains or clarifies to some extent that wherever there are human beings there are discrepancies, be in the west or in China. Injustices do exist in China, and wiping up those inequalities takes time and efforts of both government and countrymen and women. Since 1949, especially since 1978, living standards, welfare of Chinese citizens as well as their awareness of human rights have been on the crescendo with the nation’s speeding economy and people’s increasing enthusiasm in participating in governance. Both government and acquired knowledge that problems or inequality among social groups resulting from reform can and should only be settled through reform in a deeper approach, which takes even more efforts and courage as there is no ready-made model to follow.

Status of migrant workers are being uplifted in most parts of the country with gradual abolishing Hukou or resident registration system , and land reform has gone into such scenario that not only farmers be compensated but also become shareholders should their land be taken over. Medical insurance in China offered coverage over the majority populations in the last couple of years, and one-child policy was abandoned in part to allow qualified young couples to have more than one child. Opportunities are open for higher education, and free lunch is provided for pupils in rural areas in compulsory education. Pensioners may be hilarious in being informed of the fact that pension will be raised in 2014, and that raise has been on for the span of 12 years though in a small scale.

China is aimed at establishing a country ruled by law, and anyone in China, lawyers, in particular should make himself acquainted with and abide by law. And it is no way to turn to west for support for those outlaws.

I am a Chinese. The Chinese dictatorship. Corruption. Authoritarian. Make me suffocate... There is no freedom and justice. In China.. In China 90 of people don't know what freedom is.. Law for power and money is just a kind of decoration. I yearn for freedom of speech But may be unable to achieve in my lifetime. This is in the ocean. You can't imagine the statue of liberty long what look like???

Xu Zhiyong case have nothing to do with human rights. He went beyond the legal limits permissible and paid the price for being subversive. The thinking is right but he method he used is wrong. As a lawyer he should know not to become subversive. If you talk of human rights, what about the real human rights of Iraqis and Afghans, millions who have been slaughtered under the so-called US war on terrorism? What about the war criminals George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair etc. Why have they not been arrested and prosecuted?

The Chinese have their own history and their own culture, most of which pre-dates the West by thousands of years. The concept of the "Rule of Law" existed in China before the Greeks emerged from their caves and it has particular meaning in China. It is the Chinese, and not the Western, meaning of the "Rule of Law" that China will implement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(philosophy)

Is China against the tide of human progress or against the tide of Western nonsense? How presumptuous it is for the West to declare its particular values, which are particular to its history and circumstances, to be "universal values" and than attempt to shove them down other people's throats. The West has attempted to force its abstract ideas of "universal values" upon peoples all across the world, once the West ceased being able to directly extract resources from them, without regard to the real-world conditions in these countries or the material consequence of such ideas. The Chinese government has successfully implemented polices that that have allow their people to lift themselves out of poverty precisely because the have rejected the West's nonsense about universal values. In contrast, the West's favorite poster boy for aping "universal values", India, remains bogged down in complete and hopeless stagnation. Which nation would you rather be; emerging China or hopeless India? What good is freedom of speech when cannot read, cannot afford a newspaper, and there is not even reliable electricity? The Chinese have found their own route to modernity and its is as valid as any other; they are not bound to be slavish imitators of the West, no matter how much the West demands it.

So then so should those idiots who drafted the Chinese Constitution and the US Declaration of Independence in the first place. Being an idiot, my dear Mini-Tyrant, is no justification to lock someone up, if that was the case, most of us, including you, would have been locked up.

"The earliest pro to script dates to 6000BC"
`
Now what does that mean?
`
If you mean the markings on say a knife blade/axe blade found, then I think the jury is out on whether it is:
1) A full blown writing system
2) An ancestor of China's current writing system
`
Now do you have any credible sites that go over that finding and others?
`
By the way, why makes you think people in Zhuangqiaozhen 5,000 years ago were direct descendants of a Chinese society? You are talking about neolithic times.
`
Also, the current Chinese culture traces origins to the Yellow river region, not Yangtze. And the Shang Dynasty dates from something like 1,700 BC.
`
Otherwise, I didn't speak about Classical Greece, just like you were not referencing Classical China. So what if Mycenaean Greeks were not Greeks in the sense of Homer?
`
And how similar were the Shang to Classical China of the later Zhou era (Spring and Autumn period)? Were Chinese during the warring state period still doing human sacrifice?
`
Otherwise, its not known if the Dorians completely displaced populations in Greece. There was a dark age between Mycenaean and Classical Ancient Greece; and there is enough uncertainty over the nature of the "Dorian invasions" to keep many a tenured professor busy with academic debates.

Chinese writing is traced back to the Shang period, based on the "oracle bones".
`
The range for that form of writing has been given at 1,500 – 1000 BC by most accounts.
`
I believe the oldest pieces of Linear B script for Mycenae Greece (and maybe Crete) dates to around 1,400 BC. Not sure about Linear A script, but believe it was around the same time, if not earlier (with Crete?)...

Brilliant, succinct, and to a larger sense, a well deserved riposte to the sort of self-serving tendentious arguments in which one has, lamentably, come to expects from the rag-sheet like the Economist.

Furthermore, it seems to me, that once the Neo-liberal gurus in the West (such as this paper) have realize that the Chinese leadership have taken the measure of the West in the economical sphere and have them beat the West in their own game such as that developing prosperous nation without aping the "alleged universal values" of the West, then, it seems that the gloves are off in instigating internal disruption of China; so that, her pursuit of her day under the sun can be thwarted by instigating silly conflict, internally.

Pity, really. For, the West are reduced to hoping - against all hope - of seeing China internally exploding; since, economically the game is up when it comes to competing against China in the remainder of this century.

All in all; lets hope all these crocodile tears shed by the scribblers of this rag-sheet call the "The Economist", particularly when they are telling us, ever so seductively, as to what is good for China, will in turn deserved a coruscating contempt of the first order from anyone who likes to view the destiny of China to be one in which that great nation will solely make, without fear or favor, to anyone else.

Chinese culture - although a very important part of our common human heritage - is by no means older than ancient Greece. Confucius lived from 551-479, about the time of Pythagoras and about 50 years after Solon. The founder of the school of Legalism, Shang Yang, lived from 390-338 and was therefore a contemporary of Aristotle and a bit younger than Plato. Of course the foundations of both Greek and Chinese culture go back considerably longer. Talk about "Greeks emerging from their caves" is the same arrogant cultural ignorance which brought disaster to the later Qing.
.
Besides, the school of Legalism had nothing to do with the modern concept of the Rule of Law. It viewed the law rather as an instrument for the ruler to gain and maintain absolute or even totalitarian power. Its principles didn't lead to very happy results at the time - the Qin dynasty caused much cultural damage by the burning of books, and came to a quick end. Regarding Shang Yang himself, every Chinese child learns about how he got caught by his own laws and was dismembered (作法自毙）. Not really an example to follow for modern, resurgent China!

When I read your comment I wondered where your information comes from. Which Chinese elite or population group (Han) have 'reliable electricity". If you are among the unfortunate group of so called 'migrant' citizens of China you don't even have the right of college education. If you are among the minority Tartan in the north, alone your ethnicity makes you suspicious to any Chinese. Granted, the majority of Indian citizens are poor and live at a standart we, in the so called first world can't even imagine. I have been in both worlds,to see first hand how poverty is rampant. However, I have not met Indian people scared to talk, quite the opposite. I work with Chinese and the extend of brain wash is incredible. No, the Chinese are not merely imitators of the West, their newly rich imitators are far superior, coming in bus loads, spending millions and wasting it in Western places on hand bags and wines that they don't like all the while denying the existence of poverty and minorities in their country. How could you ask a first world person which they would rather be? Are you comparing a country that has never ever seen any form of democratic system, always undermining its people as serfs and slaves with a country that has successfully fought suppression under the British, yet still dealing with an inhumane cast system? Indian people live their freedoms as far as they can, they have religious freedom, political freedom and yes, they are terribly poor. The Chinese still hide their poor, purely out of discrimination and racial, historical hatred. They have annexed countries like Tibet and will not allow anyone to talk openly. There are no discussions ins China. Your comment is utterly theoretical and meaningless.

I am so sorry to say this, but millions of Indians will gladly give up this freedom nonsense you so eloquently speak of for the chance to partake the prosperity of modern China.

Furthermore, millions of downtrodden Indians - with no ifs or buts getting in a way - would gladly consign any of those "alleged universal values" in which the Westminster elites have inculcated to the Indian political elites at the dawn of Indian's independence of 1947, if in turn, the bulk of Indians poverty-stricken citizens were to have been promise a three (3) decades of Chinese level of national growth and the social uplifting that comes with that sort of exponential national development.

Moreover; compare China of 1960s to India of 1960s; and then compare these two nations in their current reality of 2014. In particularly of social development, of education level, of economical growth, of infant mortality, and of trajectory they are likely to be on, respectively, in the decades to come, and there you will see who sold their destiny on the false premise of another man agenda.

In other words, while China were determined that nothing that can stop the nation's development, particularly, if it's on the basis of some "alleged universal values" (of democracy of freedom) will ever be accepted; the Indians on the other hands were lapping the praises of those who could care less about what is good for India, particularly, when these western's based political elites start patting their Indian's counterparts at the back, as a good democrats.

All in all, one man (i.e., the China man) was content to ignore the "advise" of what is good for him; and furthermore, he was ever more determined to ignore any "alleged universal values" in which some "snake-oil" intellectual merchants from the West were selling to any body. While, on the other hands, the Indian Man, was so happy to be told that he is in a "good-esteem-position" with the West, since, he seems to have swallowed their alleged universal values.

Hence, the difference between China and Today, really boils down to the positions in which their two respective political elites took when they needed to decide what is good for their respective nation. And, the results shows. Subsequently, if talking a great game about democracy, or about freedom of speech and all manner of alleged freedom, gives you an easy way to sleep knowing the sheer poverty of India, and therefore, these talismanic arguments of yours are nothing but a "consolation prize", then, I shan't disturb you away from your delusion. But, in all honesty, the teeming beggars in the street of India (who known nothing but poverty and their descendent's will know also nothing but that kind of grinding poverty) will gladly have a chance to be "reincarnated" as Chinese citizens; regardless of how much your precious democracy may mean something to you.

I like it when someone says he went against his legal permissible limits. Are you kidding? Any sort of disagreement in China would be not permitted. Which method should he have used in a totalitarian system that is capitalist communist (hold it, is there such a system? Yes, in China!!) all in one? You may be right talking about war criminals, how can you even mention this in this topic? How would this be related? Xu Zhiyong is merely trying to gain more freedom of expression for his people. How in the world would you even come to George Bush? Mate, you need to look at yourself!

I think you are confused about what I (in a short-hand sense) can call the "Dialectics of Destiny". And, by that I mean, in the grand sweep of history, it's poverty (all the debilitating features that comes with it) that defines human's destiny.

Therefore, the first priority of "History" (in the capital "H" sense of history)is to attend to the causes of poverty; develop the wealth inherent from the human's capacity of that society in question; allow the grinding sacrifice of that day's generation to be the "path-finder" of the future generations prosperity.

After that stages of history is achieved, then allow the destiny of future generations to be based on the concern or the self-regards of those generations.

Hence, in China, the "sacrificed-of-the-path-finder-generations" (who were the ones who lived in between 1900s to late 1980s) have delivered to the Chinese society to this point in time of national prosperity and a tangible national wealth and indeed status of great power to the Chinese state.

Hence, as usual, since we have arrived at this point in the time, then the "dialectics of destiny" will once again go into it's natural process of delivering further improvement, whereby the current society will have to work their way into another way station of "destiny"; in which by then another generation will come in and take the march and the "dialectics of destiny" forward.

This is what China is about (if I were to put in a crude Hagelian's form). Which means (brutally speaking), one must allow a national property and a great power status for the country to be achieved by a "sacrificing generations". And in here one must say that the shorter the number of generations who would have to "sacrifice" themselves with a great pains of toil for the benefit of a future generations whose their lot will be a prosperous sunlit upland, the better it will be for the nation in a cumulative sense.

And, once that is achieved, then, allow a future generations who are not "burdened" by soul-breaking poverty to sit in their luxury of wealth and decides whether there is anything China needs to learn from the "alleged universal values" in which the Western's Intellectual gurus (and their mouth-pieces such this this rag-sheet call the "Economist") were raving about.

Or whether her centuries-old Chinese culture (with it's own version of legalism, with it's written code of public conduct, as the sages of Confucius and others would of understood it) can give a modern and prosperous China a political, constitutional, and moral edifice to which her nation can be govern under it.

Consequently, these later arguments are the "fight-of-luxury", in the sense of sorting out what comes after the time the social poverty of the nation is consigned to the dustbin of history; and a great nation of wealth and power is achieved for the state. Subsequently, these are the "secondary issues" in which Modern industrial China may or may not indulge in sometime in the later part of this century.

But, still, creating a prosperous nation with it's great-power of status of a state, is non-negotiable. And, in fact, it's - or ought to be - the first chapter for any nation wishing to engage in the "dialectics of destiny", in-order to arrive at her day under a prosperous sun.

This is what I fear the Indians elites comprehensively misunderstood it. And that is why they have spend their time arguing about how much of "western's alleged universal values" can be translated into the political idiom of a caste-ridden India. Instead of rolling up their sleeves in building a great national prosperity based on the human's capacity of a "few sacrificing generations"; and then allowing the subsequent generations of a prosperous Indians to settle any argument regarding what (if any) the Indians of that future date can learn from these never ending "alleged Universal values" in which western's leaders and their intellectual mouth-pieces (such as this rag-sheet) are forever intoning on about it.

This man is not a hero, but a moron and stooge of the West who is deluding people with Romanticist nonsense. He is not working to achieve anything material or objective; all he talks about is abstract immaterial flighty b.s..

Read his words:

" I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone's face."

What does that mean? Does he want clean drinking water; paved roads; higher incomes, a transparent judiciary; if that is what he wants fine, but to talk about "happiness", that is sheer stupidity. The CCP is right to jail such fools and beat them until they shut up; such idiocy is a distraction from the real work of building the country.